News

Press Release: 6th June 2016

The future comes to Salford

The 40th Anniversary of the futuristic film, Logan’s Run, is to be shown at the first-ever Salford Sci-Fi Film Festival at Salford Arts Theatre on Saturday 18th June. Family friendly shorts on Friday 17th June and a 2 day foyer exhibition of futuristic sketches by local people complete the festival experience.

The festival is completely free, funded by the School of the Built Environment research centre, UPRISE, at University of Salford as part of a research project exploring ideas for future Salfords.

Festival organiser, Jessica Symons from the University of Salford said, “Everybody has their own version of the future in their imaginations, we are interested in finding out more about their ideas for a future city.” Her team are running workshops with different groups across the city ranging from local decision makers such as councillors and council officials to home-school groups, university students and church goers.

She said, “We use a mediation exercise to take people into the future, have a look around and then come back and draw what they saw. It’s great fun but also quite profound at the same time!”

The drawings will be part of the exhibition at the Sci-Fi Film Festival and will also be published on their website www.futuresalford.org after the event. The sketchbook will be used to demonstrate the breadth and depth of Salford people’s ideas about how the city could be.

For the Salford Sci-Fi Film Festival, the team have chosen a selection of films that stimulate discussion and interest in different kinds of futures. On Friday 17th June, a family friendly set of film shorts will amuse, provoke and entertain and on Saturday 18th June, Logan’s Run explores a future where people are required to report for extermination when they reach the age of 35. When the main character, Logan, decides to reject this requirement, he goes on the run.

Laura Ager, founder of FilmFringe (https://intermediationnation.wordpress.com/) is co-ordinating the film showings and Suzie Goodfellow is supporting the workshops.

For more information and the film schedule, see www.futuresalford.org